Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner The hardest piano piece ever written

This

[video:youtube]NqRPg_0Xdqk[/video]

(ok, not really, but it's still amazing and you have to admit but some of Animenz's arrangements are some of the hardest ever, especially as he writes many of them in a week of less)


edit: or this one
[video:youtube]bs2VL_HYG9Y[/video]

You don't need all that.

Hummel shows how to do it: http://youtu.be/DyB1dUouCq8

With all the notes and all the instruments in symphony no. 40, to not miss a single note of the symphony you do need 7 or more pianos. Those ones with less pianos always miss some of the notes of the Symphony no. 40.

You also need two pianos when both treble and bass clef press the same note at once. How else are you supposed to do that?

Okay but what if you have 2 treble clefs overlapping or 2 bass clefs overlapping? You would also need two pianos in those scenarios.

Why not just get 88 pianos? One for each key. That should solve the problem.

No, that'll never do. What if there are 89 instruments playing the same note?

You're right.

Polyphonist is right and what if there is contra octave written in contrabass which sounds an octave lower than written? You would need in that case pianos extended down to C in the subcontra and those do exist but are more expensive than the regular ones.

Dang. If only we had some way to solve all these problems.

Handbells.

Do they make handbells pitched at contrabass C?

Not yet.

Tonight I attended great lecture and live performance of the Hammerklavier by an acclaimed pianist, and he told us that he thinks the Hammerklavier is the hardest piece ever written. (To be fair, he was just talking about how difficult it is to do justice to all the emotion in it, rather than complaining about technical difficulties.)

One could definitely make that argument. Who was the pianist giving the lecture?

Apparently not many of them

That's just a measly C1. We're talking about the real bass notes here; the Imperial C.

@Polyphonist: the pianist's name is Kevin Sharpe.

EDIT: I should have been clearer; the lecture was given by Dr. Silvio dos Santos, a musicologist. The pianist made some remarks at the end and . . . well, played the Hammerklavier .

Contra is C1

Subcontra is C0

sub-subcontra is C-1


What I am talking about as far as contra octave in contrabass is subcontra octave on the piano. C4 is middle C not C3. I know that for a fact because I have looked in several music books and on several music websites and they all say "Middle C is C4 and sub-contra is C0 and the rest of the octaves go linearly up or down as far as the number of the octave."

Why do you need a quarter tone piano to play a transcription of Mozart's 40th Symphony? Can you give us the measure numbers in which quarter tones appear? Did Mozart write other pieces with quarter tones?